


Mousetrap

by blusher91



Category: The Terror (TV 2018), The Terror - Dan Simmons
Genre: Desperation, Goodsir Being Desperate And Thirsty, Hand Jobs, M/M, Pining, Touch-Starved
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-11
Updated: 2019-02-11
Packaged: 2019-10-26 09:39:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17743484
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blusher91/pseuds/blusher91
Summary: Goodsir gives in to Hickey and his own body's needs.





	Mousetrap

**Author's Note:**

> I'm still hoping to write a follow-up to Executive Stress and possibly my other James/Harry stories. But I definitely feel like I want to write a sequel for this too. The heat and humidity where I live is turning my brain to mush atm, but I'm getting there.

Harry now knows that he enjoys making him uncomfortable. And needlessly drawing out their interactions.

He arches his back and splays his scrawny thighs. Presents Harry with a clear view of his spread buttocks and velvety, pink bollocks. Whether he wants it or not. At first, Harry thought it was simply accidental, but now he suspects otherwise. Now he suspects that he likes being on display. Or just putting him on edge.

“He” being Hickey, of course. The wounds on the man’s backside and upper thighs are healing slowly. It almost feels like a conspiracy against Harry. He is desperate for them to close so he doesn’t have to be locked in close quarters with the man any longer. And yet sometimes the flogging marks seem to be getting  _worse_ , not better. He knows it’s not from any carelessness on his part. He’s as thorough as ever.

He has wondered, while in his more cynical of moods (and those moods are easier to come by these days), if Hickey is purposefully disturbing the healing process to confound him. But surely such self-mutilation would be beyond any sane man?

Hickey releases soft hisses of pain as Harry tends to the stripes across his rump. Though “rump” doesn’t seem like the correct word to use concerning Hickey. "Rump" suggests plumpness. And Hickey’s body is ropey, thin. All tense, underfed muscle and protruding collarbones. 

“Forgive me,” Harry says through gently gritted teeth. “I know it’s still tender.”

As ever, he endeavours to keep his manner polite and detached. As he would with any patient. But he knows that sometimes unease and anxiety seep through the cracks in the veneer of his professionalism, despite his best efforts.

Hickey glances over his shoulder with the smirk Harry is becoming rather familiar with. “Your touch is softer than most, Doctor Goodsir.”

“I’m not a—” Harry decides to bite his tongue. He steps back, reaching for a rag for his hands. “Your wounds seem to be irritated, Mr. Hickey. I would advise you to avoid rubbing yourself too rigorously against things.”

He immediately regrets his choice of words. He averts his eyes as his cheeks burn.

Hickey straightens up and slides his legs around to sit on the edge of the sickbed. He doesn’t pull up his breeches, just cocks his head slightly to look at him. Harry keeps his head down and doesn’t take the bait. He fumbles with the rag and almost drops it.

He won’t look at what’s being offered. At what he knows is between Hickey’s legs, provocatively and unabashedly apart. What is now standing there has been the final result of almost every one of Harry’s examinations. He doesn’t know whether it’s the intimacy of his touch, the pressure of the sickbed, the mere act of being exposed. But there it grew.

Hickey chuckles softly and finally covers himself. Harry feels a throb of annoyance towards both Hickey and himself and turns his back on him. It seems that no matter what he does, he is confirming whatever it is Hickey is trying to prove. Ignore or notice. React or turn away. There's no winning hand for him.

He thinks again (almost in awe) that Hickey truly does not know shame. Harry feels somewhat ruefully like he has been dealt every scrap of inhibition that Hickey has none of. He can be laid out in front of a man unclothed and covered in the still raw evidence of his very public humiliation and Harry is the one who blushes. It hardly seems fair.

He senses movement behind him and turns quickly to find Hickey close to him. Too close. Far too close. He can smell tobacco and salt and iodine. Hickey’s lips are parted and he flicks his tongue out to wet them. There is a deep, visceral reaction in Harry’s stomach. Disgust. Unease.  _Arousal._

And he knows he isn’t attracted to Hickey. Not truly. The man stalks like a stray cat and has the manners of one as well. His presence is far too discordant to be pleasing. 

Harry furrows his brow against the pang of longing deep in the pit of his stomach. Painful and gnawing as the sharpest hunger pains.

He hasn’t been touched in so long. Hasn’t felt the body of another for what feels like an eternity. And he almost can't face taking himself in hand. With the state of things as they are, it feels like an intolerable indulgence to tend to such things. But as a consequence, even Hickey’s brazen, graceless advances are exciting. Provocative.

Hickey watches him, almost daring him to throw or order him out. Harry doubts that he could even if he tried to. He’s bigger than Hickey, but his body isn’t built for brute force. They’d likely just end up in a clumsy, ungratifying tangle. And he feels that’s exactly what Hickey wants. Hickey is just waiting for an excuse to get his hands on him.

“Was there anything else, Mr. Hickey?” His voice wavers and he hates that it does.

Hickey’s leer is ugly and knowing. Harry thinks he gets something of a thrill from toying with him. He’s short of stature and has the bearing of a starved dog. Easily overlooked. Ordinary in every possible way. But there is a darkness underneath his pallid exterior that Harry senses like a cancer, unseen but growing.

Harry is of course the first to blink and steps backwards. Hickey is close enough that he can see the flicker of triumph in his eyes. It’s a victory for him, but Harry is just glad to have some space between them. Not least because the closeness, the sense of danger, the feeling of being  _hunted_  is affecting him far more than it should. Even release from someone who very nearly disgusts him would be such a relief for his tightly-wound body. Just once. Just to ease the aching.

And it would be so very, very easy to just give in. Allow Hickey to fuck him raw. His hands curl into fists that are painfully tight.  _Oh God._  More than part of him wants so desperately, so  _desperately_  to concede. It’s shameful. How willing he is at this moment to be debased, if it just means he can feel a body against him. Not in the way he’s used to. Cold, sterile, detached. He needs heat. He needs  _possessing_.

As though reading his string of fevered thoughts, Hickey’s leer softens into a smirk and he steps towards him. Harry jerks back again and he collides with the wall that he has forgotten is there. Defeated, he rests his head against it, inadvertently ( _was it inadvertent?_ ) exposing his throat to Hickey. Like prey revealing a weak spot to a predator. He is the rabbit and he is going to be swallowed down whole. Devoured.

He thinks fleetingly of running, but then a thin arm is leaning against the wall next to his head and that overly lean body that is so unlike his own is looming close to him. Harry's mouth slips open and a panted breath escape him. Hickey’s mouth is still turned up in that detestable sneer. He examines Harry’s face with interest. The way a lover might. But they are far from lovers.

“Shall I tell you the things I have heard uttered?” Hickey puts his mouth close to Harry’s ear. Harry closes his eyes, can only frown impotently against the trespass. “Hm? Would it please you to hear the obscenefancies of men who haven’t wetted their cocks in months?”

Harry doesn’t want to hear. And he does. His body burns at the ease at which vulgarities spill off Hickey’s tongue. A tongue that may as well be forked. He can only too easily imagine the agitated longing of the crew. His mind is already summoning images of lust-maddened sailors chasing satisfaction like it was their own north-west passage. It all comes so easily from so few words. If Hickey is the serpent in the Garden of Eden, then he is the hapless Eve.

Hickey’s breath is hitting his ear, hot and close. Harry can’t move. Not an inch; not half an inch. He can only turn his head away. While this diabolist takes his fill of him. He thinks it would be far less horrifying if his prick wasn’t throbbing the way it is.

Hickey’s lips and his whiskers brush against his ear and Harry’s eyes flutter open. He arches up, electrified by even that incidental touch. “At first they spoke about their girls at home.” Hickey nuzzles into Harry’s ear, voice low and intense. “Their sweethearts. Their whores. But memories fade. Bodies and faces. And then they need other inspiration.”

Harry makes a sound, shivery and breathless when Hickey licks a deliberate line up the curve of his neck. His hands are pressed flat into the wall, his fingers stretched out almost painfully. He wants to put space between their bodies, wants to be as far from this man as possible. He wants Hickey to put his hands all over him, take what he wants, break Harry open and take it.

“Some of them would never sink to seeking out what they need.” Hickey’s body is still not quite flush against Harry’s. He’s hovering like a bird of prey. “So all they have are their dirty, little notions. They tell them to each other. Makes them realer, I think.”

He touches Harry’s jaw and Harry allows him to guide his face back towards him. It seems like self-indulgent playacting to struggle at this point. He looks into Hickey’s eyes and then at the rest of his face.

Once upon a time, this man could have been handsome. When his skin hadn’t been pitted and his lips chapped and his colour so deathly pale. How he is now reminds Harry of some penny dreadful detailing the descent of a virtuous maiden into depravity and debasement. Any fresh-faced beauty Hickey once might have had has been whittled away. Not just by the arctic winds but by a hardness and lowness that he encountered long before he stepped aboard this ship.

Hickey curls a finger under Harry’s chin and tilts his head back against the wall. He inspects Harry’s throat like he’s appraising it. Harry keeps his eyes on him with difficulty. It’s very easy to imagine him slitting his throat. He thinks he could as easily rip a chunk out of his jugular as leave a love bite.

Harry feels the sharp tickle of facial hair. Hickey leans forward and he feels him breathe in his scent. Harry thinks he couldn’t be more like some predatory beast. He is threatening, intense. In some ways, deeply erotic and in others so devoid of anything desirable, Harry feels disgusted in himself for his compliance being so easily won.

“When you’ve been eating, pissing and sleeping almost on top of each other for this long, you lose your qualms about things like that.” Almost feverishly, Harry suddenly thinks Hickey has a very soft voice that doesn’t entirely match the rest of him. “Dark and cold do funny things to a man.”

He punctuates the statement by sinking his teeth into Harry’s flesh. Sharp like a rat’s. Harry arches again, this time in pain. He makes a breathless sound of pain. Now should be the time to push him away and leave. But as he suckles and nuzzles at the wound of his own making on Harry’s neck, Hickey again strikes those thoughts from his mind.

“Do you wish to know what they say?” A rasping whisper into his skin.

_Yes._

“No,” he manages to choke out.

Hickey leans back to look him in the face. Harry doesn’t know when the last inches of space between them were closed, but he can feel the sharp ledges of hip bones pressing into him. He’s suddenly very conscious of his soft stomach, his full thighs. He’s the sow in the wolf’s jaws. Pink flesh, white flesh, softness and fat.

When Hickey sees his face, his mouth becomes a smile. The edges razor sharp and mocking. “No?”

As though it’s some form of crude, cruel evidence, he grasps Harry’s prick through the material of his breeches. Harry doesn’t need Hickey’s vulgar and pointed gesture. He’s aware what state he’s in. Wretchedly aware.

Harry just looks at him and imagines he can see himself reflected in the man’s eyes. Flushed with shame, panting with months of bottled, unheeded carnal tension, rigid with anxiety, bleary from sleep deprivation and strain. He wonders if he repulses Hickey as much as he does Harry. If Hickey had seen him as an easy target, a wounded thing to be picked off from the pack.

But inexplicably, Hickey does seem to have sway over some of the men. Harry knows not what grand ideas the man puts in their heads. His tongue is not so silver as he thinks it, but simple-minded sailors could think him quite the Voltaire. Harry thinks he could very easily ensnare one of the younger men and bend him to his desires.

So then, had Hickey instead sought him out? Was he the man Hickey had marked as an object of desire? Had he lusted for him? Watched him? Imagined the things he could do to him. Debauched him in every imaginable way in his mind—

Harry releases a moan tinged with anguish. He tries to move.

Hickey pins him in place with his hips. Harry feels the full, audacious bulk of his erection pressed into and almost between his legs. He has heard of prostitutes who employ such a method. To avoid disease, they frig the man’s cock between their thighs. Harry wonders if he’s reminding himself of that to rub salt into the wound of his humiliation.

 _You can have_ _this_ , his mind seems to say _. This petty release. But you’ll know what you are while you do it._

Hickey pushes Harry’s hair back from his forehead, threads his fingers through it. And then he leans forward and presses soft, almost affectionate kisses to the line of his jaw. Each one may as well be a cauterised needle into Harry’s skin, for they make him feel just as marked. Scarred.

In between each one, Hickey speaks in a low husk. And Harry’s body roils with the worst kind of want. “They speak of Jopson. Of how they’d force him down on his knees, take a handful of his hair and each take their turns fucking that pretty, little mouth of his.”

Harry closes his eyes. The image Hickey weaves is as vivid and visceral as sin itself. Jopson  _is_  pretty. He has wide, bright eyes. Like a doe.

Hickey pulls open Harry’s shirt. He hears the buttons groan and snap. Hickey’s hands are everywhere. Spindly, long fingers, searching and stroking. Harry feels them tugging at the buttons on his breeches without surprise.

“And Fitzjames.” Hickey gives a low whistle. “Handsome thing. Preens himself like a peacock, doesn’t he? They all have something to say about Fitzjames.”

Harry presses back into the wall like he’s trying to pass through it. The mention of Fitzjames has sent a bolt of electric energy through him. Yes. He can imagine that the men had much to say about him. But  _Christ_ , he doesn’t want to think of him now. Not here. Not with Hickey’s hand inside his trousers.

 _You wish it were his hands all over you._   _Taking. Touching. Opening._

He tries desperately to purge that thought from his mind. He can’t think of Fitzjames now. It feels depraved to drag such a man into this mess. This farce of two men using each other for his own ends.

Hickey’s laugh is cold. “Jumpy, aren’t you?” He rolls his hips with agonising ease against Harry’s. The movement drags a sound from deep inside of him that’s almost animalistic. He hates that sound coming from him.

Hickey clasps his chin between his fingers and it hurts, but Harry gives up his mouth to Hickey’s kiss regardless. He immediately tastes lemon juice and tobacco. Hickey eases his mouth open. It isn’t like a lock being forced. It’s a caress, almost a request. Harry supposes it’s so much sweeter if he willingly submits.

There’s a soft, wet noise when Hickey pulls away, eyes hooded. The corners of his mouth quirk. He’s pleased. With himself. With Harry. It hardly seems to matter. “Does that excite you, Mr. Goodsir?”

Harry looks ahead. Doesn’t speak. Doesn’t move.

“For a man whose prick is so hard, you’ve been awfully cold to me before I mentioned our dear Captain.” Hickey chuckles bitterly. “You are very predictable, Doctor. Lusting after someone such as he.”

Hickey plunges his hand down between them and down Harry’s breeches. He grips his prick hard and begins to work him. Sharply. Spitefully. The sudden contact is almost immediately overstimulating and Harry shivers helplessly, grasping desperately for something to steady himself.

His hips spasm arrhythmically against Hickey’s aggressive strokes. His body feels beyond his control. The sounds he’s making are like the choking gasps of a drowning man. And he feels like he’s drowning.

Hickey begins to pant in time with the movement of his hand. He’s looking into Harry’s eyes and even if he wants to look away, Harry finds he can’t. He’s frozen with horror and desperation. An irrational and almost hysterical fear that Hickey will stop before he orgasms.

Because _God_ , he needs this. But _Christ_  he is playing with fire. Leverage. He’s giving the man leverage over him. He’s allowing a thread to form between them. A relationship he doesn’t want. But if he can’t have the person he does want then— It feels like no matter what he chooses, he’s damned.

“And the things they say about you.” Hickey dons a mocking expression of shock. “Be hopeful they never have the opportunity, Mr. Goodsir. Such a soft, yielding body as yours.” He tuts. “They would  _desecrate_ it.”

Harry shakes his head against Hickey’s words and turns his face away. Hickey’s free hand clasps his throat, loosely and meaningfully. Harry doesn’t struggle.

“They gag to make a pretty, little wife of you,” Hickey breaths. “Would that please you?” Harry can hear the sneer in his voice. He grips Harry’s chin and forces him to look at him. “Eyes on me, Mr. Goodsir.”

Harry stares helplessly at him. His body jerks and rocks. He feels like a wind-up doll moving on its own accord. Hickey’s cheeks are flushed. There’s colour and movement in his eyes. It’s a sudden and not very comforting change.

“Or will you have none but Captain James Fitzjames?” Hickey hisses. 

Harry’s body goes rigid. He’s close to the edge now. Unbearably close. And now he realises with distress that Hickey will force him off it with mocking cruelty. Without pity or mercy.

“Do you think he thinks of you? Would lay you down softly for his pleasure?” Hickey’s voice deepens into a growl, from disdain or arousal Harry cannot tell. “Or would you be easy prey?” He tightens his hand around Harry’s prick until it hurts. “Would you beg Captain Fitzjames to make you his whore, Mr. Goodsir?”

Harry cries out and it sounds like a wounded animal to his ears. He jerks his hips up once and then twice and spends forcefully into Hickey’s hand and his own breeches. He feels he has had it forced out of him, dragged out of him. He feels unsteadily for the wall, dizzy and disoriented.

Hickey catches his breath and watches him. There is a small smile in the corners of his mouth when he takes back his hand and wipes it on his shirt. Harry holds onto the wall like it’s his saving grace. He feels his legs may give out completely beneath him. Perhaps that would be preferable.

Hickey shakes his head at him, something like pity in his eyes. Or maybe it’s simply scorn. He picks up the rag Harry had used what now felt like a lifetime ago and finishes cleaning off his hands. There is still a noticeable bulge in the front of his breeches, but with unnatural and almost diabolical self-control, he seems unaware of it. Harry is more disturbed by that than he can understand.

“Well, I’d best get on. Thank you for your kind attentions, Mr. Goodsir.” Harry only now wonders if Hickey switches between “mister” and “doctor” on purpose, is making some sort of point. “Your heart is truly incorruptible.”

Possibly he’s mocking him. It feels like this entire encounter has been mockery. The orgasm wrenched from him felt more like a tooth being forcibly extracted than anything else.

Harry thinks now that Hickey doesn’t need a clumsy hand on his prick to get his satisfaction. Picking over the memories of his easy conquest of Harry Goodsir and his soft, unseasoned body will be enough. Perhaps he will tell of his tryst to the others and throw it in like a chip to their pile of degrading fantasies concerning him.

Harry goes through the motions of cleaning himself, smoothing his clothes, pressing his hair down to his scalp, attempting to close the ruined buttons on his shirt. Behind him, he hears Hickey leave and is so relieved for it, he almost cries. He hunches over the sickbed and lets the weakness sink into his bones.

Outside, there is a voice. Harry’s body goes rigid.

“Evening, Captain.” Hickey’s voice is smooth and unruffled. Harry can imagine the deferential dip of his head.

Never mind that he smells of sex and Harry’s rosewater. Never mind that he’s flushed and unkempt and damp with sweat. And offensively erect.

Harry curls his fingers into his palms. He digs his nails deep into his skin, like his own, private flagellation.

“Goodsir.” Fitzjames’s voice is quiet and brittle.

Harry doesn’t move. He stares almost catatonically ahead. He’d like nothing more at this moment than to be deadened to this.

“Goodsir?”

Harry turns to face him. To avoid insubordination if nothing else.

Fitzjames’s face is ashen. Harry doesn’t need to ask how long he was standing outside the door. It seems almost incidental whether he heard all of it or some of it or none of it. The thick, heavy aura of expended lust in the room says more than enough.

“Captain Fitzjames,” Harry croaks.

Fitzames’s brows are knitted. Harry feels too distraught to deduce if he’s concerned or simply angry. Or disappointed.

“I... I meant to...” Fitzjames gestures aimlessly and puts his fingers to his crinkled forehead. “I can’t seem to remember.”

“Did you...” Harry’s voice falters.

 _Did you hear us?_ He can’t bring himself to say it. Not now, not ever.

Neither of them meets the other’s eye. Harry is certain as he stands there that they are both experiencing a private moment of hell. And he can’t stand the silence. Or the expression on Fitzjames’s face. It's so close to regret that it’s almost unbearable.

“It can wait until the morning.” Fitzjames attempts a smile that looks taut and thin on his face. “Good night, Goodsir.”

Before Harry can reply, he leaves and closes the door behind him. The sharp snap of it closing is like a blow.

It leaves a stinging, suffocating silence in its wake.

**Author's Note:**

> WHOOPS. I forgot to mention that I obviously took a few liberties with the timeline and who's on which ship and all that. Nothing earth-shattering though. THANK.


End file.
